Convincing Control

Convincing Control is a card control or cull, named by Ed Marlo, which secretly gets a selected card from a face down, in the hands, spread to the bottom of the deck while in the act of closing the fan.

Marlo based on a variation of his bottom control "The Prayer Cull" that appeared in The New Tops (June, 1966) it was first published in Ed Marlo in Hierophant No. 3 (1970). Marlo was said to have created it based on a description told to him by Alton Sharpe (not the method, just what he had seen from a spectators point of view) about a move he had seen Larry Jennings do.

The same basic control, which many now refer to as the "Hofzinser Spread Cull", was also described in a Hofzinser card problem "Synonymous Thoughts" (First Method) which was first printed in English in the The Sphinx for April 1922.

Ackerman wrote in his book, Magic Mafia Effects (1970) that the technique was "a variation of Ed Marlo's improvement of the Hofzinser card pass" and called it "A Card Pass." (p. 29)